I want to start an online MF distribution platform, can I place orders on behalf of my clients? How does it work? Is there any regulations to follow? Can you hignlight any risks involved.
You will need to take a one-time authorization to buy funds. So for example, if you suggest a combo of 3 funds, you will have to take a one-time authorization to buy those at least once. Not all funds have API's, but most of the big ones do. Since the price change on MF happens only once a day, you can also do an excel upload of all the orders before the cutoff time.
If you don't want to go about building all of this on your own, you can use what we use at mf.zerodha.com. We talk to BSE Star MF platform, which in turn connects to all the fund houses. So individual integration with fund houses not required. If you want to quickly validate your idea, you could just leverage everything we have built.
The video KYC for In-person verification done by a few service providers is not really 100% compliant. SEBI says that the original documents have to be looked at in person.
A dark cloud on the horizon is: SEBI had a white paper October last year, which they have gone quite on for now. Check this. If this comes into play, a distributor will not be allowed to advice (currently it is considered incidental to the business of distribution, hence no additional requirements). If this comes into play, you would have to run two businesses, one advisory, and one distribution.
The other risk is that all platforms are coming with a direct option to buy/sell MF. Selling MF directly with flat fees is not really an economically viable model. There is not enough scale in India currently to make money with such a model. Also, none of the players you are seeing in the MF space have really got any traction, so if you want to be another wealthy/scripbox etc, don't know if there is a market out there.
2 Likes
@nithin
Hi nithin I am planning for a mutual funds screener website and searching for Mutual fund API. Can zerodha provide me this if no then can you help me in this.
I need daily NAV data of different schemes.
We take it from a data vendor, so will not be able to redistribute for a standalone platform. You can reach out to Reuters, Dion, etc for this.
Of you could just scrape it from here Net Asset Value of Mutual Funds | Types of Mutual Funds in India
@nithin as you mentioned in comments section what are the big funds which provides API’s . How can i get the details of those?
We are working on opening mutual funds through APIs for people looking to build a MF platform. This might take a few months though. You could reach out to exchanges if you need something quickly- BSE Star or NSE NMF teams, their APIs will give you access to all fund houses.
which one of the two has more volume liquidity turnover ?
In mutual funds there is no concept of liquidity right? All your orders through whichever platform reaches the AMC. Btw, BSE star is larger in size compared to NSE NMF.
1 Like
what is the difference between : subscribing from bse star or nse mnmf or from the zerodha mutual funs platform ?
Can you go through this thread once again.